In Brooklyn, First Comes Gentrification, Then Comes a Food Co-op

From left, Geoffrey Green, Bill Brierton and Nembhard Blake working last month on the Windsor Terrace Food Coop, which is set to open March 21.CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times

By Stuart Miller

Feb. 27, 2015

In the summer of 2012, Windsor Terrace residents packed into a community meeting, furious that the Brooklyn neighborhood’s sole supermarket, Key Food, was being replaced by a giant Walgreens drugstore. Jack O’Connell, who had lived there since 1985, was put off by the rancor. But in the middle of all of the arguing, one man raised his hand with a suggestion:

“Maybe we should start a food co-op.”

It was the first positive idea Mr. O’Connell had heard all night, and after the meeting ended, he raced after the man on the sidewalk to see just how serious he was.

Until recent years, Windsor Terrace was not the kind of neighborhood that would have needed or wanted a food co-op. It was filled with old Brooklyn families, mostly Irish, Polish and Italian. If someone didn’t go to Key Food, they went to the local greengrocer on Prospect Park West. “All the old-timers knew him,” Mr. O’Connell said of the shopkeeper. Additionally, the neighborhood had social anchors like the American Legion and VFW halls where people congregated.

But as Park Slope became increasingly unaffordable, Windsor Terrace — just to the southwest — began attracting younger families, who found Key Food a dreary shopping experience. And by this time, the old-time gathering spots had closed.

“Now a whole new group of younger people have moved in and are wondering where you go to interact with your community,” Mr. O’Connell said. “There’s a lot of desire for this.”

This is the Windsor Terrace Food Coop, which is expected to open on March 21 in a small corner storefront on Caton Avenue. Mr. O’Connell, 71, is the driving force behind its founding; now retired after 30 years spent working at an antipoverty nonprofit on Long Island, he is the chairman of the co-op’s board.

Mark Horberg — the man Mr. O’Connell tracked down — is the treasurer. Mr. Horberg maintains that if he hadn’t suggested the co-op, someone else would have, which has an element of truth to it. Indeed, Brooklyn — already home to the granddaddy of New York food co-ops in Park Slope, which started in 1973 and has grown to 17,000 members — has become a hotbed of small co-ops in the last three years: Greene Hill Food Co-op in Clinton Hill, Bushwick Food Co-op, the recently opened Lefferts Community Food Co-op, and the Bay Ridge Food Co-op, which currently operates as a buyers’ club but hopes to have a storefront by year’s end.

The Windsor Terrace co-op is expecting that the same demographic that has driven the co-ops in other neighborhoods will make up the core of its membership. Jeremiah Fox, an incoming board member helping oversee the store’s design, points out that the construction itself is dictated by it: “Our rule for aisle measurement is that a jogging stroller must fit.”

Christine Petro has seen Windsor Terrace shift since she arrived in 2003. At first, she said, she felt like an outsider on her own block, where families had lived for generations. But “Windsor Terrace has changed more in the last two years,” she said, “than in the 10 previous ones.”

Raised in rural Maryland, Ms. Petro initially shopped at Key Food because it was a block away. “I had not been exposed to a variety of food in Maryland, so this was fine,” she said. “Then I got a little more savvy about food and about Brooklyn.”

She joined the Park Slope Food Coop, but it always felt “just out of reach,” she said, given the limited transportation options between it and Windsor Terrace. Now she is the vice chairwoman of the Windsor Terrace Food Coop.

Michael Emperor, a member of the Bay Ridge co-op board, sees a similar demographic change in Bay Ridge. “We would not have undertaken this 20 years ago — it would not have worked,” he said.

These new co-ops, he suggested, are also a response to other societal shifts. “Everything has become more corporate and everything is now online,” Mr. Emperor said. “A co-op’s price point certainly helps, but people also want the face-to-face interaction.”

Mr. O’Connell said he liked the idea of affordable organic produce but saw the opportunity for something bigger. “This is a community-building experience where food is the vehicle,” he said, “rather than a food experience with the community building as the vehicle.”

The Windsor Terrace co-op, like most of the new food co-ops, will follow the Park Slope model: It will be member-owned and -operated — members will work shifts stocking produce or unloading deliveries, enabling them to avoid the markups of traditional supermarkets. Only members — there are 325 at last count, paying $100 each — will be able to shop there. (The Flatbush Food Co-op, which has been on Cortelyou Road since 1985, less than a mile from the Windsor Terrace location, allows anyone to shop there, and members do not have to work shifts. Its prices, accordingly, are higher.) Mr. O’Connell said his board received helpful advice from the Park Slope Food Co-op and the smaller new co-ops operated by members.

“We’re looking to be very flexible, always reviewing what we’re doing and being willing to say, ‘That wasn’t such a good idea, why don’t we change direction,’ ” Mr. O’Connell added, acknowledging that consensus is more easily reached with a smaller membership. “We’re not Park Slope,” he said. “I don’t know how I’d manage 17,000 people with an opinion.”

The Park Slope co-op is notorious for contentious internal debate, making national news with a proposed referendum to ban Israeli products (like seltzer makers and vegan marshmallows) in solidarity with Palestinians. Ultimately, the referendum was not held.

Many major decisions will be made only after the co-op is up and running, but one decision that is final is the Windsor Terrace name, which people supported even though the storefront is on the Kensington border and expects to draw heavily from that more densely populated neighborhood. People also overcame their wariness about being called the WTF Coop. “There were some concerns,” Ms. Petro acknowledged. “And some chuckles.”

The location reveals that while these new co-ops say plenty about trends in food and community building, every New York story is ultimately about real estate.

“Space is the largest issue in New York,” said Karen Oh, who started the Lefferts co-op. She found a “supergenerous” landlord who required minimal rent, and so she had a “ ‘Field of Dreams’ moment,” she said, opening the co-op in October without any membership. The Lefferts Community Food Co-op is now up to 180 members and is open two days a week.

Jeanne Solomon, a Bay Ridge co-op member who helped Windsor Terrace with legal advice, said the Bay Ridge board initially hoped to get 1,000 members and then find a suitably large store. “That wasn’t happening,” she said. Instead, it became a buyers’ club: Members order specific foods and pick them up at a set location every two weeks. Mr. Emperor said the co-op has scaled down its ambitions (there are 280 members) and is “actively pursuing a sweetheart deal” similar to what Ms. Oh found for the Lefferts co-op.

Mr. O’Connell said a central Windsor Terrace location would cost $4,000 a month; their current spot is only $1,500. “I always imagined it would be somewhat closer to the Key Food spot,” Ms. Petro said. “But Kensington will open us up to more people.”

Mr. O’Connell envisions additional branches in the heart of Windsor Terrace and maybe deeper in Kensington. (And, he joked, pointing out the new school being built across the street, if it goes bust, “we’ll open a candy store there.”)

There have been complications. Snowstorms twice forced the cancellation of a membership meeting. Another co-op in Newark offered bins for bulk food, but just as Mr. O’Connell and Mr. Fox were about to pick them up, they realized it was the Newark in Delaware, not New Jersey. They’ve postponed retrieving them.

And then there is the old Key Food site. Heeding the protesters, Walgreens and the property owner ultimately carved out space for a new, smaller Key Food Market that is also readying to open.

Mr. Fox maintains that the new Key Food will not affect the co-op’s plans, because that market will offer local residents convenience but not the prices, the organic selection and the sense of community that a co-op can.

While he does not see the market as a rival, he does feel as if the co-op is racing to the finish line. “I really want to get open before them,” he said. “That would really show what a community can do.”

Correction:

An article last Sunday about the establishment of a food co-op in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, misstated Jeremiah Fox’s affiliation with the Windsor Terrace Food Co-op board. Mr. Fox, who is helping oversee the store’s design, will join the board this year; he is not a current member.